


time and hearts will wear us thin

by cynical_optimist



Series: brave face talk so lightly (spy au) [1]
Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: 2015 NMTD/LLL Secret Santa, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Minor Character Death, Implied/Referenced Violence, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:28:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5539976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cynical_optimist/pseuds/cynical_optimist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You’re my partner; it’s my job to look out for you,” Balthazar protests, fingers curling into his blankets.</p>
<p>“And as your partner,” Peter says, the words stiff and sour in his mouth, “I have to keep an eye out for you. You’re compromised, Balthazar, and that’s dangerous.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Balthazar nearly dies and Peter makes some bad decisions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	time and hearts will wear us thin

**Author's Note:**

> For my secret santa, deducing-nerds. I went somewhat off-prompt in this (it sort of got away from me, sorry!) but I hope you like it regardless <3
> 
>  
> 
> Title from Dodie Clark's "Sick of Losing Soulmates" because I may not believe in soulmates, but that is a gorgeous song that everyone should listen to.

Peter knows he has no right to be mad. It was a good plan, and it worked, and that’s all that’s supposed to matter in their line of work. That’s what Bea tells him, when she finds him pacing outside the medical wing, and Peter really wants to hate her.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not it worked,” he snaps, and that should speak for itself, that he dares to yell at her when things are just getting back to normal. “It was stupid. He could have died.”

“He didn’t.”

“He wasn’t supposed to be out there in the first place.”

Bea nods, sharp. “That’s true,” she concedes. “But we couldn’t exactly stop him, could we?”

Peter’s breath catches, and he turns away from her, back towards the closed door.

“Why don’t you go in?” she asks him. “Dr Moth wouldn’t keep you out.”

He shrugs.

Bea huffs. “Fine,” she says. “Be that way.” He sees her lips quirk at the accidental pun, but it fades too quickly. It’s not often he sees her smile, anymore.

“Okay,” Peter sighs, before she walks away. He fishes out his ID, swiping it and waiting for the door to open. She gives him a triumphant grin that only affects the corners of her mouth. “Thanks,” he adds, as he heads inside.

The medical wing is almost empty, most of the beds carefully made and unoccupied, and those that aren’t are carefully sequestered off with curtains. It was supposed to be a quiet week, uneventful, easy, mindnumbing missions given out to every agent willing to take one.

Balthazar wasn’t even meant to be in the field.

Dr Moth grins at him as soon as she looks up from the paperwork she’s filling out.

“Agent Donaldson,” she greets. “Here for Agent Jones?”

Peter swallows. “Yeah, yeah, of course.” He hesitates, shifting on his feet. “Um, can I—is he…?”

Dr Moth nods. “He’s stable, just under anaesthesia. The surgery went without complications.”

Peter nods, letting some of the fear that had gripped him fade.

“I’ll just call a nurse… we put him in one of the private rooms, standard procedure for more serious injuries—oh, Chels, can you take Agent Donalson to Agent Jones?” She catches the arm of a passing nurse, who nods and smiles brightly at Peter.

“Right this way,” she tells him, and when her arm slips from Dr Moth’s hand, their fingers catch for half a second. Peter’s heart clenches.

“Thanks,” he says, following her through the hallways he didn’t even know existed.

“It’s no problem,” she replies, grinning. It would be so creepy if she didn’t seem so incredibly _genuine_. “Balth always brings Paige and I coffee on harder days—he’s one of those actually good people, you know?”

Peter knows, better than she ever could, knows that it’s just one of the reasons he’s lying unconscious in the medical wing instead of helping him with paperwork or or scrunching his nose at his taste of music while they work.

Peter knows that he is a reason, too, and it frightens him more than he could ever admit.

“Looks to me like you are too,” he says instead.

She shrugs. “Anyway, we’re here,” she says, scanning her ID and opening the door. “I or another nurse will be around shortly to check on him, and call us immediately if he wakes up.”

“What–?” groans the pale agent in the bed, and Peter’s heart skips.

“Huh,” the nurse says. She takes another look at her chart before going to his side, and Peter hovers at the door, unsure.

She performs the usual checks, Balthazar blurry but responsive, giving his name and rank and the date without issue, and Peter decides to wait outside until it’s over.

Everyone says to worry about the results, not the method, but Peter can’t get over the fact that _Balthazar nearly died_. Balthazar, who was supposed to sit out and be tech support, who was supposed to be safe.

Peter waits there, resting against the wall, until the nurse comes back out. A couple of people pass him as he waits—a fellow agent with a bandaged arm, a nurse whose face isn’t even visible under the mound of medical supplies.

There was a time he would have stopped them, made easy small talk for a few minutes under the pretence that everything was okay. It’s rare he can muster the energy or will for that farce, anymore.

The nurse comes out after a few minutes, writing something on a chart filled with data that makes no sense to Peter. She blinks when he sees him.

“Aren’t you going in?” she asks. “He could probably use the company.”

Peter nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Of course I am.”

She holds the door open, staring at him patiently, and he goes in before he can lose his nerve. Balthazar is sitting up in the bed now, bandaged and pale.

Peter hates himself for it.

“Hey,” Balthazar murmurs. He looks like he can barely keep his eyes open.

“Hey.”

Balthazar goes to rub his eyes, hissing when he raises his arm. “That probably wasn’t a good idea,” he admits, somewhat ruefully, and Peter swallows.

“No,” he says, words clipped. “It definitely was not.”

Peter wants to step closer, to lie on the bed next to Balthazar and curl around him so that nothing could ever harm him again. That would hurt him, though. Peter would hurt him, and he’s done enough of that already.

Balthazar looks down at his hands, then back up at Peter, unapologetic. “It got the job done, though,” he shrugs, and Peter can see the flare of pain he tries to hide at the movement.

Peter snorts. “It also got you in a hospital bed.”

“I’m fine.”

“Sure you are, bro. That’s why it’s causing you pain to even talk right now.”

Balthazar scowls and looks away. “ _I’m fine_ ,” he repeats. “Really. And isn’t it better than the alternative?”

“Right,” Peter says, curling his fingers into fists. “The alternative. Me, having done my job, in my debriefing, you sitting at your desk as you’re meant to be, my mission completed. Everybody safe. That’s so much better than this situation.”

“You dead, lying in a gutter somewhere because you wouldn’t answer your comms and we had vital info.  Another agent gone, before anyone has even begun to recover from the last. And why—because I didn’t dare defy an order given out of _pity_?” Balthazar takes a breath; it shudders and rips at him, and Peter can see it all over his face.

“You think none of that would have applied if you had died? You were assigned to tech for a reason, Balthazar!” His nails dig into his palms.

“I’m alive.”

“Barely.”

“Alive enough.”

“Not nearly.”

Balthazar rolls his eyes, shifting. “It’s the result that—”

“Would everyone stop saying that?” Peter snaps. “A lot of things are more important than the result. For example, having agents not even allowed in the field at the moment wind up in the medical wing.”

“Again, I’m fine. I’ll recover,” Balthazar insists. “It won’t happen again.” He sounds so bitter, so defeated, and Peter wants to sit down next to him, to hold him close and apologise, thank him for saving his life like he knows he should. He can’t, though, no matter how much he wants to. He can’t, because he knows Balthazar is lying.

“Right,” he says. “Because you’re not at all compromised.”

Balthazar stills, jaw clenching.

_I’m sorry_ , Peter wants to say. _I’m so, so sorry_. It’s not right, what he’s doing, not fair in the slightest. It makes him a terrible person and a terrible friend. It makes him a good agent.

He continues because he has to, because he knows the consequences if he doesn’t. “Your feelings are influencing your decisions,” Peter says, like his own aren’t. “You can’t tell me that you would have done the same thing if it were Agent Duke out in the field.”

“You’re my partner; it’s my job to look out for you,” Balthazar protests, fingers curling into his blankets.

“And as your partner,” Peter says, the words stiff and sour in his mouth, “I have to keep an eye out for you. You’re compromised, Balthazar, and that’s dangerous.”

Balthazar breathes in and holds it for a beat; Peter forces himself to look away. “Fine,” he says, quietly, and Peter can’t help but look back.

“Fine?”

“Fine,” Balthazar repeats. “I’m compromised. I thought…” he lets the sentence hang for a moment before shaking his head. “Never mind. I’ll request a transfer. Are you happy?”

“Very,” Peter lies, and he looks away again before Balthazar can read him, Balthazar who probably knows him better than anyone else in the world, Balthazar who has done nothing to deserve this.

It has to be done.

“Now please get out,” the injured agent says. His voice doesn’t shake, but Peter can tell it’s not far from it, and he wants nothing more than to apologise, to fix it, but he can’t.

“Agent Jones,” Peter nods, and leaves on knees that he can barely keep from shaking.

Out of the room, Peter lets his fingers shake. Ten seconds, a couple of deep breaths—he opens his eyes and stills his hands.

Ursula comes running down the hall, then, glasses a little askew, still holding onto whatever it is she was working on before she heard.

“Agent Donaldson,” she greets, too formal. “Is he…?”

“He’s awake,” Peter tells her, and sees the way the relief collapses around her.

She moves past him quickly, and he can hear the quick beep of the scanner as she swipes her ID. He wonders if she was given access or just hacked her way in. It could be either, really; the agency’s been more lenient on her in these past few months, but she doesn’t look like she had bothered to stop by the director’s office on her way.

Ursula had looked so worried, filled with the same fear that had consumed him when he’d seen Balthazar, seen the chaos unfolding around him, his eyes closing, heartbeat fading beneath his fingertips. She wouldn’t be able to handle it if she lost anyone else.

This is the reason, he reminds himself. None of them would be able to handle losing another agent, not after everything—after Hero. Peter wouldn’t be able to handle it, the blood on his hands, the guilt weighing down his shoulders, the empty space in the agency felt keenly by every member. A Balthazar who hates him is better than a Balthazar who is dead.

That doesn’t relieve the ache in his heart.

 

 

A day passes, then two, and Peter knows Balthazar isn’t yet out of medical bay, but still he receives a carefully stamped letter on his desk, _notification of transfer_ written across the front.

He’s been assigned to a rookie, Jacquie Manders, a girl he’s passed in the halls a few times. He doesn’t know who Balthazar’s been assigned, doesn’t dare ask.

“What’s that?” Bea asks him, leaning across the shared space between their desks, just like she used to. “New mission?”

“New partner,” he answers, and sets the paper carefully down on his desk.

She starts, almost falls from her chair. “What?”

Peter shrugs. “Agent Jones and I aren’t safe as partners. He’s requested a transfer.”

“Agent Jones?” she repeats. “Where the hell did that come from? He’s never been Agent Jones to you.”

He doesn’t reply, doesn’t trust his voice.

Bea shakes her head. “No—no, let me get this straight. You’ve been partners for six years, now, since rookie years. You were fine last week, before your mission. You survived Hero’s…” she trails off there. “You can’t tell me that you just didn’t work well together.”

“Yeah, well,” Peter replies, a quiver slipping into his voice despite his best efforts, and doesn’t continue.

He can feel Bea’s pitied gaze on him, but she only stands, rubbing his shoulder as she walks past. “Mission report to get to,” she says. “But we’re not done here.”

Peter forces a smile and pretends her pity didn’t make it all hurt even worse.

 

 

Agent Manders is sharp witted and strong willed, and picks up the life they live like a mantle she had been born to take on. Balthazar would like her, Peter thinks, would like listening to her harsh sass and daring stories. He needs to stop thinking about everything in terms of Balthazar’s opinion. It’s no way to move on, to heal from the jagged edges the termination of their partnership has left. He tries to hide it, but his new partner wasn’t hired for nothing.

“So who were they?” she asks, as they return from a mission one day, three weeks after his fight with Balthazar.

“What?”

She rolls her eyes. “C’mon, I’m not stupid,” she says. “You’re in love with someone. But that sure as hell doesn’t make you happy, so something happened between you. You haven’t mentioned their name once, so it’s not something amicable—death, probably. And you keep on turning to me, about to say something, before you realise I’m me, so I’m guessing your former partner is this person. Killed in action? Missing?”

Peter swallows. “You’re astute, for a rookie,” he says.

She crosses her arms, not saying anything.

He sighs. “He’s not dead,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“We found it was best if we worked apart,” he elaborates, the words now easy on his tongue.

Manders hums thoughtfully, frowning at him. “Is that allowed?” she asks. “Relationships between agents? I haven’t read the entire manual—couldn’t be bothered—but it would be somewhere there, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s…tricky,” Peter replies. “Mostly up to our own discretion.”

“So that’s what it was? You’re in love with him, and you knew it wasn’t safe.”

“Yeah,” Peter answers. “Yeah, it was.”

Jaqiue snorts. “You’re an idiot,” she says, and Peter can’t help but agree.

 

 

One month after his fight with Balthazar, he runs into Ursula in the halls.

She stares at him for a long moment, but it doesn’t feel like she’s waiting for something.

“You really hurt him,” she says finally. “I hope you realise how much you hurt him.”

Peter nods, heart caught in his throat.

“He’s been assigned to the ASIO transfer, Boyet. Professional. Compassionate. He’s willing to put his life on the line to protect anyone in the line of fire, and he’s seen enough action to do it effectively.”

Peter nods again, the fear he had made himself not think about slowly fading. “So he’ll be safe.”

“As safe as any of us are.”

That’s safe enough for him, and safer than he’d be with Peter as his partner.

“Thanks,” he says. “I know I…”

“You did the right thing,” she answers. “It hurt him, and he can’t see it, but it was the right thing to do. So thank you.”

She moves past him before he can react, and he’s glad for that. What is he supposed to say, “you’re welcome”? It’s something he did for her, sure, and the agency, but it’s selfish, too.

 

 

Peter knows he’s being ridiculous when he’s jealous of the nursing staff. It should be impossible to feel anything but fond of Dr Moth and her flurry of nurses.

“We’re just here to drop off these files,” Peter tells the nurse who intercepts him, his partner pouting by his side. She hates the paperwork side of it all. “Do you know where Dr Moth is?”

“Oh, yes, yes, of course,” the nurse nods enthusiastically. “She just went into her office—reading for her audition for my production of Faustus, no doubt—we’re doing a nursestaff-wide theatre group. Do you know much Marlowe?”

Peter glances at Jacquie, rolling her eyes, then at the doctor’s office. He really just wants to get in and out. “I’m on a tight schedule,” he tells the nurse. “But I’m sure Agent Manders here would just love to hear more.”

He walks away, catching the look on her face in a more reflective window pane. She looks murderous.

“I hate you,” she mouths, and he grins.

When at last he makes his way into Dr Moth’s office– knocking, not scanning, for once, the doctor having foregone the more advanced tech quickly taking over the agency– he stops for a moment, chest aching.

Dr Moth sits at her desk, looking exhausted, but she manages a bright smile when he enters. The nurse who had guided him to Balthazar’s room is leaning against the desk, and Peter can see from the door that they’re holding hands, Dr Moth’s almost white-knuckled around her companion’s.

“Agent Donaldson,” she greets, hand loosening. The nurse turns around and smiles at him, too. “Agent Jones’ ex-partner, right?”

He nods, holding up the files. “I’m just here to drop these off,” he says.

“Sure, just put them on the desk.”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter nods, crossing the room to do so.

The nurse squints at him. “I met you, yeah? You’re the one who came to visit him, after the injury.”

He swallows.  “That was me.”

She holds out her hand. “Chelsey Long. I’m Paige’s girlfriend.”

From the fond look she sends her, Peter guesses that Paige is Dr Moth.

He takes her hand. “Great to meet you properly.”

“You, too.”

He steps back again, biting his  check. “Um, do you–”

“Agent Jones is doing okay,” Dr Moth says. “He’s on a mission at the moment. It’s standard, in and out, should be over in the next couple of days. You should talk to him, when he comes back. He’d listen, I think. I can tell you miss him.”

Peter looks at his shoes. The women are still holding hands, and a sickening jealousy wraps its way around his heart at their open affection. “That’s exactly why I can’t,” he says.

The nurse shakes her head. “Well, it’s not really our business,” she sighs. “It’s different as an agent, I suppose. Anyway, our shift is over, and I’d better be getting this girl home.”

Dr Moth smiles up at her girlfriend gratefully. “I don’t think I’ve slept in two days,” she admits. “Too much going on.”

“And that’s why we’re going home. Come on, babe.” She helps her girlfriend to her feet, and Peter knows this is his moment to leave, to get back to his partner and forget all about this encounter, but something sticks his feet to the floor and steals his words from his throat.

“Agent Donaldson,” Dr Moth says, eyes sharp and understanding. “Peter. I get why you won’t talk to him, why you think it won’t work between you. But sometimes the risk it worth it, you know?”

How would you know? he wants to ask.

“It’s just something to think about,” she smiles, leaning her head on her girlfriend’s shoulder, and Peter is hit again by that awful surge of jealousy. He wants that. He wants that with Balthazar. He wants to hold his hand and stare into his eyes and kiss him whenever he feels like it. He wants to be with Balthazar.

He knows he can’t, knows he’s burnt that bridge, knows it’s for all the right reasons.

Peter nods and leaves.

Peter spends the next three days mulling over what the doctor had said. He knows his own reasoning, has gone over it a million times as he convinced himself that what he did was right. Compromised agents are dead agents.

Bea rolls her eyes every time she catches him frowning. “I love you,” she tells him, and there was a time that those words would have filled him with hope and joy. “But you need to stop moping.”

“Not moping,” he retorts.

She snorts. “Right, you’re just alternating between staring at the ceiling and Balth’s old desk because it’s fun. You made your decision, and now you need to either live with it or fix it.”

“I am  living with it.”

“Then you should probably do something to fix it, because you’re failing pretty miserably.”

Peter crosses his arms. “I can’t do that,” he says honestly. “We’re both–”

“What, compromised?” Bea shakes her head. “Nobody cares. We have entire families working here. You think none of them were compromised? You think Hero and I weren’t compromised? Hero and Leo? Hero and Ursula? You’ve been working with Balthazar for years, Peter, and none of this was an issue before.”

“He nearly died,” he protests. “He was supposed to be on tech support, but he ignored his orders and got himself seriously injured.”

“Yeah,” she says. “He did. And, as thanks, you broke his heart, and your own.”

“As thanks, I saved his life.”

“You know him,” Bea sighs. “You know he’d run into the line of fire for anyone. He’d die for anyone.”

Peter looks back up at the roof. “I don’t want him to die for me.” I couldn’t handle it, he doesn’t say.

Bea understands, mercifully. “I still think you’re an idiot,” she says. “And I really think you should rethink it, or at least talk to him. He doesn’t hate you.”

He doesn’t look at her, only squeezes his eyes shut. “It would be easier if he did.”

On the fourth day, Jaquie approaches him cautiously. There is a concern in her eyes that he’s rarely witnessed in their time as partners.

“What’s up?” he asks, standing. “New mission? Please don’t tell me we’re going to the desert or something.”

“No.” She hesitates for a moment, then says, “Agent Jones is in the medical wing. Something went wrong with his mission; his partner is MIA and their backup didn’t make it in time.”

Peter feels everything freeze around him for a single, horrid moment. “What?”

“Agent Jones is in the medical wing,” she repeats. “I ran into Agent Duke in the hall, she told me to find you. He was brought in a few hours ago.”

Peter grabs his ID and runs out of the room.

When he at last makes it to the medical wing, he grabs hold of the first nurse he finds.

“Which way is Agent Jones?” he asks.

The nurse blinks. “Uh, room five. But I don’t know if you have access,  you–”

He leaves anyway, not listening to the rest. Even if he doesn’t, he can just wait outside until someone who does comes.

Room five, it turns out, is the exact same room as the last time, and Nurse Long is leaving just as she arrives.

“You here to see him?” she asks, holding the door open.

He can do nothing but nod.

Ursula is sitting next to the bed, face pale and hair messy. She looks up at him for a moment before returning her gaze to her unconscious best friend.

“Guess it didn’t work,” she says quietly. “Trying to keep him safe.”

He sits down in the chair on the other side. “Guess not,” he agrees. “Do you know what happened?”

She presses her lips together and brushes a stray piece of hair out of Balthazar’s face. “We aren’t entirely sure,” she says. “Security footage is distant and blurred, but we’re doing all we can to get it; Kingston sent me down here thirty minutes ago, said I wasn’t concentrating. But, um, it seems to be deliberate, thought-out. Capture or kill. Whoever it was took Boyet and injected Balthazar with something. We…” She trails off, takes a deep breath. “We’re pretty sure it’s the same people that Hero…”

“Oh.” Peter looks again at Balthazar. “What does Dr Moth say?”

“They’re flushing it from his system; it’ll be a while before he’s mission-ready, but he’ll be okay.”

Peter’s relief burns his veins.

Slowly, he reaches out and takes Balthazar’s hand, lying on top of the blanket.

“I don’t know what I would do if he died,” he admits. “If he died without me there, thinking I hated him.”

It’s no fault but his own, he knows. The fact tears at him, poking at his heart and lungs and swooping along his stomach. Balthazar could have died, Peter’s last words to him ones of derision. Lies.

Peter cries, the tears dripping onto the sheets of the hospital bed, and Ursula pretends not to notice.

Balthazar wakes up after five hours,  when Ursula has gone back to help Agent Kingston, promising to return in a few hours. He blinks awake, finger’s stirring in Peter’s grip, frowning confusedly at the agent by his bedside.

“Pete?” he asks, voice weak. “What are you…?”

Peter shakes his head. “I’ll call a nurse,” he tells him,  but doesn’t move straight away, just staring at Balthazar’s eyes for a moment. Bright blue, a little dulled, and beautiful. Then he moves, releasing Balthazar’s hand to press the button calling whichever nurse is on-call in. Before he can move away properly, Balthazar takes hold of his hand again.

“Peter,” he insists. “Why are you here? Where’s – where’s Fred?”

He stills, throat clenching painfully. He knows the tear tracks are probably visible, that there’s no way of explaining away his presence. “You were hurt,” he says, and doesn’t answer the second question.

Balthazar’s face freezes in shock. “What?” he asks, still bleary. “You don’t care.”

Peter swears under his breath, squeezing Balthazar’s hand between both of his. “I do,” he insists. “I swear I do.”

The nurse comes in then, that strange one who had tried to talk to him about Faustus. “Ah, hello,” he greets. “I just have to run some, um, tests, just check a few things over– you came rather close to death, you know.”

“Yeah, okay,” Balthazar agrees, and Peter lets go of his hand.

The nurse does his checks, rambling the entire time about Marlowe, which would be endearing if it wasn’t for the fact that Balthazar is right there, and Peter wants to tell him everything, to gather him into his arms and will his pain away. When at last the nurse finishes and leaves the room, promising to notify the necessary people of Balthazar’s state, Peter turns back to him and finds his words gone.

Balthazar stares back for a few moments, waiting. When nothing happens, he sighs and turns away.

“I’m sorry,” Peter says. Balthazar doesn’t look at him.

“I thought you didn’t care,” he murmurs.

“I do.”

“You said I was compromised.”

Peter swallows. “I was, too.”

Balthazar turns to him, then, bright blue eyes so, so tired. “Why?”

“I thought I was protecting you. I thought, if I wasn’t with you, if you hated me, you wouldn’t be so reckless all the time,” he explains. “I was right, when I said you were compromised. You… you care about me, and I care about you. Not working together was supposed to keep you alive. Keep you safe.”

Balthazar frowns. “That didn’t work, though.”

“No. It just hurt us both. You, especially.” Peter scowls, looking down at his lap. “It was stupid of me.”

Balthazar nods. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “It did– it was.”

Peter huffs a laugh, only half-humorous. “And here we are again,” he says. “You in a hospital bed, me wishing there was something I could do to fix it.”

“There’s nothing you can do to fix it, Pete.”

“If there was, though,” Peter says, “I’d do it. Anything. In a heartbeat.”

A hint of a smile plays at the corners of Balthazar’s mouth. “Just stay here,” he says, quietly, quickly, like he’ll never say it if he doesn’t then. “With me.”

“Yeah?”

“It won’t fix it, but it– but you make it better, I think.” Balthazar isn’t looking at him, pale cheeks tinged pink on the white sheets of the hospital bed.

“Okay,” Peter agrees, and takes his hand again. “I’ll stay.”

Balthazar grins up at him. “You know what else would make it better?” he asks.

“What?”

“If you kissed me.” He says it daringly, hopefully, a little fearfully, and Peter chuckles.

“That’s a terrible line,” he says, and presses their lips together. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. And yeah, it was,” Balthazar agrees, and Peter leans his forehead on Balthazar’s. “It worked, though.”

Peter laughs again, and kisses him softly again, before pressing his lips to his nose, then his forehead. “I guess it did.”

**Author's Note:**

> This has the possibility of a continuation, if anyone is interested. It would involve angsty hersula and crying and amnesia and everything else that makes up a good spy au.


End file.
